SIX OF SPADES. 125 



Six years after her marriage-day they bore her 

 slowly through the dark avenue of cedars, and the 

 chaplain came in his white surplice to welcome her 

 with words of hope and peace. 



Three children were born to them. The marquis, 

 who soon showed himself to be a true " chip of the 

 old (ice) block," and a ghostling of amazing promise; 

 Lord Evelyn and the Lady Alice, who, happily for us 

 all, resembled their mother. Never were two brothers 

 so unlike each other. I doubt whether the elder ever 

 broke out of a walk or into a laugh in his life, whereas 

 the younger would be scampering all over the place, 

 with his little sister breathless behind, and his merry 

 voice making our hearts glad. Now they were in the 

 conservatory, changing the tallies, and sticking the 

 falling flowers of the camellia upon the euphorbia's 

 thorns ; now turning out a lot of sparrows, which 

 they had caught in traps, and adorned with appen- 

 dages of brilliant worsted, red, green, and yellow, in 

 the immediate neighbourhood of the aviary, and so 

 essaying to impose upon us the idea of a general 

 escape and dispersion of all our feathered curiosities ; 

 and now "drawing" the shrubberies, with Lord 

 Evelyn at one end as master of fox-hounds (the fox- 

 hounds by an Irish retriever), and Lady Alice at the 

 other as an under-whip, waiting, watchful and silent, 

 for the fox to break, which he generally did in the 

 guise of a blackbird ; and then announcing his exit 

 with the promptest and shrillest of " tally-hos." Our 

 marquis the while was indoors at his books, having, 

 it was reported, a precocious relish for algebra, and 

 an insight into the science of political economy not 



